This year, we were obliged to say goodbye to far too many literary luminaries, as well as a few pretty complicated figures. From the man who made the Strand into 18 miles of books to the woman who made speculative fiction what it is today to Philip Roth, who needs no descriptor. Read more

Signing with a publishing house is undoubtedly a very exciting experience, but it can also come with a side of confusion, especially for debut authors. It can be hard to let your work go, because you've worked on it so hard and up until now, you've been in control (perhaps with your agent too). I wanted to explain some of the decisions publishers might make for your book, and why.

We've all heard the good news. Self-publishing is going through the roof. In fact, self-publishing was up 59 percent in 2012. Up from what you might ask? According to a new study from Bowker, the ISBN agency, 246,921 titles were self-published in 2011 compared with the 391,768 titles published in 2012. Read more

I've been both a children's book editor and author for roughly a decade. This means that I'm sometimes trying to defend an author's behavior to my publishing friends, or trying to explain an editor's moves to my writer friends. Read more

In a tightening market for fiction and especially for debut authors looking for that big break, editors can be choosier - and many are more dependent than ever on literary agents to find their next debuts.

When I first saw the #MisandryInPublishing hashtag, I assumed it was a joke. How could anyone actually believe that there is a bias against men in an industry that has historically prioritised the work of men, and paid them more for it? How? Read more

Indie authors all agree: hiring an editor to work on your manuscript is one of the best and most necessary investments an author can make. Editing takes both time and money and can encompass anything from a substantiative (i.e. Read more

Linked items...

‘I never planned to be a writer. It is a very odd way to make a living. Just telling lies... I do have a visceral sense of breaking through the shell of something when I walk into my study in the morning. Now I just go and do it.

Recently I have found myself wondering about the prevalence of rough sex in new fiction written by women. It's viscerally present in You Know You Want This, the new short-story collection by Kristen Roupenian (who shot to fame last year with Cat Person, published in the New Yorker): I found some of the scenes so unpalatable that I had to keep putting it down.

In 1988 the 14th novel by a little-known 63-year-old British author was published in New York. The Shell Seekers, the 500-page story of a woman, Penelope Keeling, looking back on her life and loves during the second world war, took the US by storm. Read more

When asked, Marlon James is hard-pressed to name his favorite story. It's admittedly a nearly impossible request to make of anyone, and surely more so of a novelist, whose trade relies so deeply on both intake and telling, however tangled, of tales. Unable to name just one, James improvised. Read more

Christobel Kent is among the English language's finest crime writers-and finest writers, as far as I'm concerned. In poetic, nuanced prose, she constructs powerful stories about misogyny and violence. Read more

As self-published works grow in popularity, indie authors are increasingly in a position to market their book to foreign publishers or to agents and producers working in film, TV, and theater. But before authors can do that, they need know their rights. Read more

‘I never planned to be a writer. It is a very odd way to make a living. Just telling lies...

I do have a visceral sense of breaking through the shell of something when I walk into my study in the morning. Now I just go and do it. Sometimes it doesn't go well, but most often, I'll look up and it's time for lunch and I don't know what happened... Read more